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Floor Speech
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Mr. GRAHAM. Madam President, I just want to pick up where Senator Cornyn left off. He has been a great person to try to work with to find a solution to our immigration problems.
But what we are dealing with on the Senate floor is not an immigration issue.
To my Democratic colleagues: I have worked with many of you on solutions to immigration, comprehensive immigration reform.
We are now having to deal with a broken border from a national security lens--172 encounters that we know of, of people on the Terrorist Watchlist. In fiscal year 2021, it was 15. So it is going through the roof.
So we have to get control of our border for our own national security sake. Terrorism is on the rise. The world is on fire. Now is not the time to have a broken border.
The numbers are really astounding. In September, we had the highest encounters at the border in recorded history. In December of 2020, we had the lowest in decades. In fiscal year 2023, which ended September 30, 2.5 million people. Since President Biden has been in office, 6 million people. That is larger than the State of South Carolina.
So one of two things is going on regarding the border. The Biden administration wants it to be this way for some reason or they are incompetent. If they are incompetent, they need to listen to people who have actually tried to secure the border successfully and work with us to get it done. If they want it to be this way, it is going to end if you want money for other countries.
I have been involved in about every game there is on immigration reform, but I am here to tell my Democratic colleagues: I am not going back to South Carolina and say I provided money for Ukraine and Israel, which I desperately support, unless we fix in a real way the problems at our border. That is unsustainable for me.
The Speaker of the House was just addressing the Republican Senate. I think he understands the need for Ukraine funding, but he says border security has to be real for the House Republicans to be able to do what they need to do.
To my Democratic colleagues: You are fighting us in a way that makes no sense to me. I understand why we should send money to Ukraine. You had me at hello. I understand why we need to help our friends in Israel. I don't understand why you fight the changes that would bring back order out of chaos.
Is that the position of the Democratic Party, that the policies that led to this overwhelming surge in illegal immigration are not subject to change?
We are not going to vote for legislation that doesn't stop what is on this chart, period. Look at the line. Fiscal year 2020, 458,000 encounters; fiscal year 2023, 2.5 million. It has to stop.
Look at the asylum system that is being completely gamed. It has become a joke. It needs to stop.
Parole. We have had some major efforts to reform asylum. Senator Lankford is doing a good job.
To my good friend Senator Bennet, I want money for Ukraine. I support Ukraine funding. I think a lot of Republicans do. But we have to have real reform on the border. And your statement that Ukrainian aid should be separate and apart from the border is not going to happen.
Parole is meant to be a case-by-case analysis based on two things: There is an urgent humanitarian reason for the person to come in under parole or a significant public benefit--any alien applying for admission to the United States. That is the law that is being abused.
Past administrations granted parole in a handful of cases. There had to be an urgent humanitarian reason or the individual in question had to provide a significant public benefit. The Biden administration is using the parole statute to allow people in by the hundreds of thousands without any individual analysis, in my view.
So all I am asking to do is follow the law. Quit using the parole statute to allow hundreds of thousands of people in, in violation of the law. If we went back to what the law says, most of this would stop.
Secretary Mayorkas, here is what he said to Senator Lankford:
We need . . . the ability to remove individuals who [do] not qualify [for asylum] . . . with efficiency and speed.
Why are so many people coming? Word is out that if you get into America, you ask for asylum, you never leave. We release you into the interior of the country, years pass before your asylum claim is heard, and you are here in America, and you never leave.
We have to change the asylum laws so that you actually have to apply to the first safe third country you pass through, not just here in America. And we should not release you until your claim has at least been adjudicated at the initial stages. And 90 percent of the asylum claims are eventually denied; so, clearly, the screening system needs to change.
So long story short, we are not going to pass a supplemental that doesn't have policy changes to dramatically stem the flow at the border. This is not an immigration negotiation. There is not going to be a DREAM Act provision attached to this. This is about locking the border down in a fashion to give the public confidence that as a nation, we have the ability to secure our own border.
To all of my friends on the other side--and on this side--who have negotiated immigration reform in the past, President Biden's irresponsible handling of the U.S.-Mexican border has made it virtually impossible to do an immigration deal any time soon. No Republican in their right mind would vote for a comprehensive immigration bill until the Democratic Party can prove that they are capable of securing the border.
Everything we worked for all these years has been lost. Your approach to the border during the last 3 years has made it impossible to do immigration reform until we first secure the border, not as part of an overall effort to deal with immigration, but you need to prove to us and the people of the United States you can and will secure our border. Until you do that, no deal.
How this ends, I don't know. I just know this: I am OK with aid to Ukraine. I am more than OK with aid to Israel. I am insisting on border security that is meaningful. I am not asking for H.R. 2. I am not asking for everything I would do to secure the border if I were King of the country. But I have been around this issue enough to know what works and what doesn't. The policy changes we are insisting upon regarding asylum and parole need to be implemented to regain control of our border. And that is not too much to ask.
I look forward to working with our colleagues on the other side--and you--to find a way to help Israel, who are in dire straits, find a way to keep Putin from going past Ukraine, bring some sanity back to the world. But you are going to have to work with us. And we are not looking for half measures. We are smart enough on our side to know what works. And I am not into doing a deal that doesn't work.
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